Spin sum

A spin sum adds a squared scattering amplitude over the unobserved spins of external particles. For an on-shell Dirac spinor, the completeness relations ${\sum }_s{u}_s(p){\bar{u}}_s(p)=/p+m$ and ${\sum }_s{v}_s(p){\bar{v}}_s(p)=/p-m$ turn the sum into a gamma-matrix trace.

For an unpolarized initial state, average the squared scattering amplitude over its equally populated spin states. With two incoming spin-one-half particles this gives a factor $1/(2\cdot 2)=1/4$. Unobserved final spins are summed rather than averaged.

A gamma-matrix trace is a matrix trace of products of gamma matrices. In four spacetime dimensions, $\mathrm{tr}({\gamma }^{\mu }{\gamma }^{\nu })=4{\eta }^{\mu \nu }$ and $\mathrm{tr}({\gamma }^{\mu }{\gamma }^{\nu }{\gamma }^{\rho }{\gamma }^{\sigma })=4({\eta }^{\mu \nu }{\eta }^{\rho \sigma }-{\eta }^{\mu \rho }{\eta }^{\nu \sigma }+{\eta }^{\mu \sigma }{\eta }^{\nu \rho })$.